


Passion

by justanothersong



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Mild Angst, Mildly Dubious Consent, Reader-Insert, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-07 14:22:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8804272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanothersong/pseuds/justanothersong
Summary: Natasha nodded.  “The only bright side is that it’s gone out of vogue. Doesn’t mean you won’t encounter it. It’s usually in a gas but occasionally a liquid. It’ll smell like burnt popcorn when it’s first released. Never assume that your team hasn’t been affected, even if they’ve only been exposed for a few seconds. It takes a minute or two to take effect.”





	1. Chapter 1

You moved stiffly as you made your way down the helipad and into the compound. There wasn’t too much bruising but the soreness was there, the ache of skin and muscle treated a little too roughly not fading as fast as the marks had. No one commented on it, and for that you were grateful. Besides, it wasn’t as though it weren’t typical for you to return from a mission with a few bumps and scrapes, even something as simple as the info scout had been.

You were doing pretty well, you thought, until you made it to the elevator door and reached out to press the call button. Your elbow gave a sharp ache, skin a little raw and muscle a little taut from where it had been ground into the cold tile floor, and you winced. If Natasha saw, she didn’t comment, but there was no hiding it from Steve.

He blanched. “Are you…” he began, reaching out one gloved hand towards you.

“I’m fine,” you said quickly, causing yourself a little more pain as you pulled out of his grasp. You pasted on a tired smile. “Nothing a hot bath won’t fix,” you added, hoping to sound more congenial. You hadn’t missed the way Steve had winced when you pulled away.

That was the last thing that you wanted.

Your expression softened. “Steve,” you said quietly, reaching out to place a hand on his arm, feeling the solid muscle beneath the sleeve of his stealth suit. “I’m fine. I promise. Just tired, need some time to relax.”

He nodded mutely, but his expression remained troubled; when the elevator came, you entered alone, and he watched you as the door closed, Natasha standing by with a mildly concerned look on her face.

 

You hadn’t even intended to work that weekend. It wasn’t even a pressing job, just a hint at a possible Hydra records dump location, found up a rural backroad a little ways into Pennsylvania. It probably could have been handled by a couple rookie agents on the face of things, but Steve took everything that involved Hydra deadly seriously and insisted he attend to it himself. Steve was going to run point with Bucky on back-up, and Natasha would provide transport; they expected to be in and out in a matter of hours.

But then Tony received some pieces he’d had fabricated for Bucky’s cybernetic arm, to upgrade the electrical system and allow for more of a sense of feeling. You had just happened to be in his lab when they came in; a shatter injury to your right femur had left you with a lot of hardware stabilizing the bone, and Tony insisted on checking it over regularly. It hadn’t given you any trouble -- no pain, no misplaced screws -- but Tony took his work very seriously, particularly when it was implanted in people he called friends. You were fine, as expected, but didn’t like the idea of Bucky being made to wait for his upgrade. 

You’d volunteered to take his place without a second thought.

“C’mon doll, I can’t let you go and spoil your weekend like that,” Bucky told you with a smile, clearly touched that you’d even volunteer.

You had snorted. “Oh right, like I have such an active social life,” you replied, and Bucky had laughed. It was a running joke among all of you, that if you weren’t working, you were all lounging about the compound together; no one went out, no one dated. Social lives were a casualty of the work, and you all felt it was important enough work that the sacrifice had to be made.

“Still, I don’t wanna put you out,” Bucky protested, even as he glanced sidelong at the parts Tony had prepped and waiting for installation.

“It’s not a problem, Buck,” you said, and clapped him quickly on the shoulder. “You get your upgrade, and I’ll let Steve know I’m tagging along instead of you. Won’t take no for an answer.”

 

And it wasn’t a problem, really. You liked working with Steve. It was rare you went on a small run like this with him, instead finding yourself often paired off with Tony or Wanda for smaller jobs, just as a matter of happenstance. It would be nice to have a little one on one time with Steve, with Natasha just there to put down wheels and buzz in your ear when necessary.

Because the truth of it was that you liked Steve. And you had, for a long time.

It wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to bring up. It was hard enough, navigating romances between coworkers, when your job was something less life or death. Working in an office, whispers by the water cooler? That was all fun in games, compared to what you did.

It was a little more difficult to approach when the object of your affections daily had your life in his hands, and you had his in your own. Worse still when he was technically your commanding officer -- and that was disregarding all of the baggage of being more or less a visitor from the past.

So you kept it quiet. Let it simmer, just below the surface. Sometimes you thought he knew. Sometimes, you thought he might even reciprocate. 

 

When you arrived at the helipad in full mission gear, Steve had given you a puzzled smile. After you explained the situation, his smile had grown, and he nodded.

“Sounds good,” he agreed. Natasha, already at the controls of the UH-60 Black Hawk that was often used for these smaller missions, sent a smirk your way that wasn’t lost on you.

You were never quite sure what Steve knew of your feelings, but you were damn certain that Natasha knew all about them. Nothing got past the Black Widow.

Steve briefed you during the short flight, and everything seemed to go as planned. The building looked like an abandoned service station down a strip of dead highway; intel said that it was a cover, and beneath it was a small research facility that had been outmoded and converted into a records dump. There should be a few old servers and databanks on site that could be quickly copied, after a little rewiring.

In and out, no muss no fuss.

You moved quickly through the facility, finding the hidden entrance to the lower levels soon enough. Everything was thick with dust and it was clear that it hadn’t been accessed in some time, though there was still a current running, enough to light the corridors when you tried a switch and keep the computers humming. You made short work of it, even as you had to rewire and reconfigure several of the older machines, so that you could retrofit a USB port to copy data. You wiped each one as you finished, and were ready to head out when Steve noticed another door towards the back of the last computer lab.

“Broom closet?” you suggested, half-joking.

Steve shook his head, nodding toward a dimly lit keypad next to the door. “Nobody’s locking up their brooms like that.”

With a sigh, you nodded. You knew it must have been too easy. Steve examined the door and while you had nothing on hand to crack the door code and no intel with the appropriate key to punch in, he found that the construction was no more solid than an average steel door.

“This shouldn’t be a problem,” he said, taking hold of the handle, and promptly ripped the door off its hinges, dropping it gently onto the tiled floor before stepping inside.

You couldn’t see it, but you heard the soft hiss of gas and the scent hit the air only seconds later. It was just as Natasha had told you, smelling heavily of burnt popcorn before fading into something sweeter.

“Cap, wait!” you cried out, but it was too late.


	2. Chapter 2

It had been on one of the final days of your training, the intensive course the others put you through before officially taking you in as one of their own, that Natasha pulled you aside. You had been wary of her in those days; she carried a strong, subtle confidence that you admired and aspired towards, and her skills, on full display as she guided your training course, were intimidating.

You hadn’t believed her at first. You thought it had to be some kind of joke, screwing with the rookie. You’d heard the rumors over the years but you thought they were just that -- rumors, tales told by those a breath away from the battle, full of intrigue and ridiculous ideas that couldn’t possibly be real.

“You have to understand,” she told you quietly. “Human experimentation was Hydra’s forte, and their success had other organizations branching out to try the same. Genetic manipulation, mental programming, all of it. It didn’t take long before they realized there were other ways to control people.”

You shook your head. “You can’t be serious.”

Natasha nodded. “Deadly,” she responded mildly. “The only bright side is that it’s gone out of vogue. Doesn’t mean you won’t encounter it. It’s usually in a gas but occasionally a liquid. It’ll smell like burnt popcorn when it’s first released. Never assume that your team hasn’t been affected, even if they’ve only been exposed for a few seconds. It takes a minute or two to take effect.”

Your eyes widened, realizing that she was telling the truth. “What does it… I mean… how…” You stumbled over your words, still having a hard time wrapping your head around it.

“It’s a chemical cocktail that reacts with high amounts of testosterone in the blood,” Natasha explained, voice still dropped low so no one nearby might overhear. You assumed there were two versions of this talk -- you were getting the one catered towards female agents. “For that reason, it typically only affects males.” Natasha paused and gave a small, amused smile. “Be glad the scientists who developed it were misogynist bastards. They didn’t consider the possibility of female field agents.”

“So if it won’t affect me…” you began, thinking you were in the clear. Natasha shook her head.

“Look around you. Who have you been training with, spending most of your time with? When it comes to this team, it’s kind of a boy’s club. There’s me, Wanda, occasionally Maria Hill or Pepper… and now you. Even most low level agents are still male,” she explained. “Chances are more than likely that if you’re caught in an exposure incident, you will have someone with you who is going to be affected.”

You blanched at the thought. “What do I do then?” 

Natasha gave a shrug, a slow roll of her shoulders that was more elegant than it should have been, but that was just her way. There was nothing about her that wasn’t beautiful.

“That is your decision to make,” she told you, expression shifting into the blank mask she oftentimes wore. “You’re under no obligation to… offer your assistance. Keep in mind that if you do choose to run, they will most likely chase you. And without the release…”

You arched an eyebrow. “Release?” you echoed.

Natasha nodded. “The chemical plays with the endocrine system but it also increases heart rate and can affect brain function. We’ve seen agents caught in the gas eventually kill one another. We’ve seen men go tachycardic and eventually go into arrest. The only way to stop it seems to be the hormone release that occurs after achieving release with a partner.”

“Basically you’re telling me I can leave them to die, or let them use me to get off?” you responded bluntly.

Natasha nodded again. “To put it succinctly, yes”

You bit your lip. “Couldn’t they just, uh, handle things on their own?” You made a quick hand gesture to punctuate your words, and Natasha snorted a short laugh.

“It’s not that easy,” she relented. “It’s a different combination of hormones released when they go solo, it doesn’t seem to work. Need to have a live partner, so they’d look to you almost immediately, and lack any sense of reason. No one would think less of you for running. Many of us have faced that decision. It’s not an easy one to make.”

“Have you?” you asked, realizing only after the words escaped your lips that the intensely private Black Widow might be aggravated with your prying.

She paused a long moment before nodding affirmatively. “I was lucky. There was no choice for me to make. I was on a mission with someone that I… someone I have a history with. There was never any choice for me but to stay. It may be a more difficult decision for you, should you come across it.”

 

That had been three years prior, and now here you were. The telltale scent in the air was undeniable, and the fact that Steve hadn’t spoken or returned after entering the room had you on edge. You froze in place for the briefest moment, before you remembered the serum; Steve healed quickly, couldn’t even catch a cold, and alcohol and most painkillers had little effect on him. It could just as easily be that he was immune to this as well.

“Steve?” you asked, stepping into the dimly lit room. The scent still hung heavy in the air, sweetening now as it spread and overtaking the cloistered, dusty scent the rest of the facility had carried. There were large server banks, all up and running, but they were slightly newer than the rest and would be easier to manage.

Steve was sitting on the floor, back against one of the server banks. He’d already abandoned his helmet and earpiece on the floor, and pulled open the collar of his uniform. You could see that he was breathing harder, sweat beading on his face. He glanced up when you stepped inside and you could see his eyes were wide and dark.

“Go,” he ground out, taking a low, gulping breath. “Get back to the helo and Nat. Take’er in the air if you see me following.”

You steeled yourself, already having decided what course of action you would take. You put your hand to the communicator in your ear and stepped away for a moment so that the Captain couldn’t hear you.

“Natasha, I need you to turn off your ears for a little while,” you said quietly.

The earpiece crackled to life after a moment. “No dice,” she responded. “You know protocol.”

“Nat,” you said, voice strained. “Burnt popcorn. I’d like a little privacy.”

A long moment passed before she responded. “Got it,” she replied. “I’ll close communication channels for a half hour and then peek in. Fifteen minute intervals after that if you’re still… occupied.”

You sighed heavily. “Thanks Natasha.” She didn’t respond, and you heard the telltale click and whine of the communication channel closing.

You stepped back to where Steve sat; he closed his eyes and groaned your name when he saw you, shaking his head.

“Please,” he gritted out. “You gotta get outta here.” He would have been briefed on the issue just as you had been, you realized. He knew what was happening to him.

“Steve,” you said quietly, kneeling before him. “C’mon. It’ll be okay. No one else is here, not for miles. Natasha isn’t listening in. It’s just you and me.”

He shook his head again, eyes still squeezed shut. “I’ll be alright,” he insisted. “Just need a little time. The serum--”

“If the serum was going to stop this, it would have never affected you,” you replied, unable to stop yourself from reaching up to touch his face. It was meant as a gesture of comfort, and you knew that on some level he understood that, but the contact drew a long, low moan of your name from his lips.

Steve opened his eyes again and licked his lips, staring at you intently. “I can’t,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m trying but I can’t -- I can’t…”

“Shh, it’s okay,” you told him, giving him a tight smile.

You stood and turned your back, feeling strange shy suddenly, in spite of the situation. Your jumpsuit had a buttoned flap over the zipper and you pulled it open, the metallic pop of each snapping button seeming so loud in the quiet room, otherwise filled only with the hum of the servers and Steve’s labored breathing.

“You don’t have to,” he told you, even as you felt his eyes on you.

You pulled the zipper down and shrugged your shoulders, letting the black material slip down. You and Natasha had joked now and again about the inconvenience of one-piece mission gear: you’d be all but nude to give him the access he needed.

You glanced over your shoulder as you pulled down your suit, sliding it over your hips to puddle at your feet on the floor, and gave him your best smile.

“I know that,” you told him. “But I’d never let my Captain down when he needs me.”

You had half a mind to spit on your hand to ready yourself for him, but you realized with no small sense of shame that it wasn’t necessary. Your body was reacting to the mere thought of it, feeling his skin against yours, letting him take you. Your face burned with the guilt.

He was panting now; you hadn’t turned back to him, just stood waiting, but you could hear how he struggled. You heard the popping of buttons and the clink of his belt, and you shivered.

“I can’t,” Steve said again, voice almost pained with it. He was giving you one last out, telling you that he was losing control. 

“I know,” you responded quietly, and those were the last words spoken before you felt his strong hands at your waist.


	3. Chapter 3

Steve kissed your shoulder once, one small gesture of comfort that was all he could muster before you felt your panties torn away and you were pushed to the floor. It nearly knocked the breath out of you, sharp pain shooting up from your wrists where your palms had landed hard and flat against the floor, your knees aching against the cold tile. 

The pain was was eclipsed by the sudden sense of fullness, the drape of Steve’s body over your back, and the hard, constant slap of skin against skin. You could barely breathe from it, the way he drove into you with wild abandon, without pretense or further need for permission. He was beyond words now, only unintelligible grunts and groans rising from his lips, interspersed with half-formed growls of your name. 

You couldn’t stop yourself. Your hips moved without your consent, rutting back against him as he moaned and slammed his body into yours. His hands were rough and strong, gripping at your hips, your thighs, reaching up and tearing away at your bra, leaving it torn and hanging open, giving him leave and access to fondle your breasts roughly and groan at the feel of your soft skin against his palm. You dropped your head, unable to stop the soft moans from falling from your lips; Steve seemed spurred on by the sound, leaning to nip and bite at your shoulders, scraping his teeth against the tender flesh, rough enough to leave a mark.

You could feel it building now, that low pressure deep at your center and god, what was wrong with you? How could you, how could you get off from this, of all things? You were using him, you realized, using Steve to fulfill some wild fantasy you must have had, letting him take and take and take, giving him anything he asked for and then some. Your face flushed red at the thought, embarrassed in knowing that he must realize, that he must feel how slick you are, how your muscles went taught and contracted around him with every thrust.

You bent at the elbows, the weight of him almost too much, and dropped your head on your arms. You bit into your own forearm, desperate to stop the sounds spilling out of you, the moans and half-gasped cries of Steve’s name. He growled again and for a moment you thought he might pull you back up until you felt the stutter of his hips and the sudden rapidity of his thrusting. The angle drove him deeper and your cries were near constant now, so close that you could feel the tremors in your thighs as he pushed you closer and closer to that edge.

“So good,” he mumbled, and for a moment you thought you’d imagined it, assigned words to his grunting without really hearing them. But then he repeated it, said your name clear as a bell and rumbled out a deep, low, “So fucking good.”

And that was it; you couldn’t hold back any longer. Your climax hit you hard enough to force out a loud, high-pitched cry of his name that you had been trying so hard to hold in, your body trembling with the force of it. The sudden tightness it drew from you was enough to send Steve over that same edge and his hands gripped your hips tight enough to bruise as he gasped and keened at his release, falling to his side with the sheer exhaustion of it and pulling you against his chest as he went.

 

You kept going over it in your mind after you had returned home. Steve had finished the data transfer as you did your best to clean yourself up, tucking your ruined panties into a pocket while you zipped and buttoned yourself back into your suit. You didn’t speak, only walked back to Natasha and the waiting helicopter in silence.

You felt his eyes on you as you went. More than once he looked as though he wanted to speak, but stopped himself before it came to any words. 

The flight back was all but silent.

 

You inspected the damage in the shower, finding only a few scrapes and bruises and one very pronounced bite mark on you shoulder, but little evidence otherwise of what had happened. You felt strangely detached from the whole thing, as though it hadn’t really happened to you personally, but someone had told you about it, or you’d watched it on a screen.

You cried a little, there in the warm spray of the shower. You weren’t even entirely sure why.

It was so strange. There was shame, the residual feeling that you had done something wrong just by enjoying the feel of him against you, inside you. A little confusion, because it was something you had long wanted and yet not -- it wasn’t how you would have hoped it would be, it wasn’t something real.

You weren’t certain how you should feel.

Much of the night was spent on the couch in your quarters, staring at the blaring television but not really seeing anything. Your mind was still there, back in that little server room. Wanting to do it over. Wanting to not have not done it at all. It was frustrating and confusing and you were going to lose your mind if you didn’t sit down with Steve and hash everything out.

You needed that, you realized. Needed him to say something more, to acknowledge what had happened. To figure out where the hell you stood in the aftermath.

Rolling onto your back on the couch, you sighed heavily.

“FRIDAY?” you called, voice dropped low with the lateness of the hour, even though you knew no one else could hear you. “Where is Captain Rogers? Is he awake?”

“Captain Rogers is presently in his quarters,” the AI replied. “His biorhythms indicate that he is awake. Would you like to request his presence?”

“No thanks, FRIDAY,” you said, standing up with a determined set to your pace. “I’ll go to him.”

You slipped quietly out of your quarters and headed for the elevators, bare feet making no sound against the plush beige carpeting in the corridor. Only Clint had rooms on this floor, and you knew that he spent much of his time one floor up, in Natasha’s quarters, so there was no one there to run into as you passed. 

You didn’t realize that you hadn’t even bothered to get dressed until you were already in the elevator, pressing the button to head three floors up. You shivered, suddenly chilled, and pulled the short silk robe you wore tighter around your body. 

You considered turning back to dress in something a little more appropriate, but you knew that if you turned back now, you’d lose your nerve entirely. You’d have to go as you were, dressed in your thin burgundy robe; you’d slipped it on after your shower with the intention of changing into a sleepshirt, but you’d gotten so lost in your own thoughts that you spent hours just sitting on your couch, going over the day in your mind.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter contain discussion of perceived sexual assault.

It was impossible to sneak up on Steve, if he was paying attention; his enhanced hearing probably marked your approach as soon as the elevator doors opened, and when you paused outside his door to take a deep breath, it gave him time to open it before you had even knocked.

He said your name in surprise, the word falling out in a slow rush of breath, blue eyes a little wide at seeing you standing there.

“Hi,” you said, a little sheepishly, biting your lip. You wondered if he had known it was you approaching, or thought perhaps that his ears were deceiving him; he had told you once that his senses could be overwhelming at times, and that he tried to normalize them by memorizing certain familiar sounds. He could mark out the footfalls of a friend from yards away.

“Hi,” he responded, clearly uncomfortable. He stared at you a long moment before squeezing his eyes shut and stepping back, opening the door wider and beckoning you inside. “Sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m not thinking straight, didn’t mean to leave you standing on my doorstep like that. C’mon in.”

“I don’t mean to be a bother,” you said, stepping inside. You felt a little more exposed now, stepping into his quarters so late at night and finding him dressed in flannel sleep pants and a t-shirt, nearly as covered as he would be in his tactical gear, and there you were, only a thin layer of soft silk clothing you.

Steve shook his head and gave you a small, sad smile. “You’re never a bother,” he told you. “Always glad to see you.”

 

You stepped gingerly across the carpet, aware that every move you made shifted the robe you wore; when you perched on the edge of his couch, you jumped at the sudden feel of a soft afghan being tucked over your shoulders. You glanced up at Steve and gave him a grateful smile, puzzled at the sadness you saw in his returning smile for the second time since you’d arrived.

“Thanks,” you said, a little sheepishly. “I don’t know what I was thinking, just walking out of my place without getting dressed.” You pulled the blanket tighter around yourself and watched Steve circle the other side of the couch, sitting down in an armchair off to the side of the couch.

You stared at each other a long moment in uncomfortable silence, just peering back and forth, before Steve heaved a sigh and sat forward in his seat.

“We have to talk about this,” he said, voice taking on the authoritative tone that it often did when you were in the field. That felt a bit like a blow to the gut -- that he’d take such a cold, clinical approach to it -- but then, what could you really expect?

It was a mission gone wrong, nothing more. You had to keep reminding yourself of that, or you’d go mad.

“We do,” you agreed quietly, clutching the blanket even tighter around your shoulders, almost as if to shield yourself from the conversation itself. You didn’t want to hear it -- you didn’t want his apologies, his ideas on how to address it in the mission briefing, or thoughts on how to prevent it in the future. This was worse than not talking about it, worse than crying alone in your shower, wondering, fearing.

Because now you knew: now you knew it meant nothing to him, nothing at all but a simple loss of control and a small favor from a sympathetic compatriot.

 

“I can be out of the Tower within a week,” Steve began, and you frowned, suddenly confused. He didn’t seem to notice the frown you wore at his words and continued on with his spiel. “I’ve lived alone before, only moved in to help Bucky after we got him back, I can manage it. It won’t be as convenient, but I won’t be too far off and it’ll keep us from running into each other.”

“Steve?” you asked, ashamed at how soft and meek your voice sounded. He didn’t seem to hear you and kept right on with his plan; he must have been thinking it over, rehearsing it in his head before you arrived, knowing the conversation would have to start soon enough.

“As for missions, that will be simple enough,” Steve went on, nodding to himself. “I can talk to some of the others -- nothing too detailed, nothing personal, just let them know that we’d prefer to work separately on any smaller jobs so we’re not assigned together. The bigger stuff, that we’ll have to just take as it comes. I can’t walk away from this team, and I can’t ask you to either. But we can figure it out.”

He paused, and cast his eyes to the floor. When he spoke again, his voice came out smaller, even timid.

“I can’t promise you’ll never have to see me again, but I’ll do my damnedest to stay out of your way. You shouldn’t have to run into me at all, not after… not after what I…”

“Steve?” you asked, a little louder this time, enough to catch his attention. Your eyes narrowed. “You know… you know that you didn’t do anything wrong… right?”

Steve gave a short, harsh laugh. “You sure about that?” he replied, eyes on your knees, still bare beneath your robe and the blanket wrapped around your shoulders. They were red and scraped from the floor in the server room, and beneath your sleeves, your elbows looked the same.

“You were compromised,” you told him, voice incredulous. You had expected this to be difficult -- to be a strained conversation, at best. But not this. Never this. Finding Steve in a fit of self-loathing, believing that he had -- that he had… god, you couldn’t even think it. That a man who was kinder, more honest, more trustworthy, and braver than any other you’d ever met should think himself capable of such a thing… it was too much.

Steve shook his head, eyes bright with what could only be unshed tears. “Doesn’t matter,” he told you, the disgust with himself evident in his voice. “I should have… done something, anything. I should have been able to stop myself.”

“You didn’t have to!” you told him, exasperated and upset, if only because you could see he was hurting. The mess you had made -- that the two of you had made, thanks to Hydra and their disgusting drug cocktail -- was far worse than you had imagined. You moved closer, sitting on the far end of the couch nearest to his chair, and took his hands in yours. “Steve, you didn’t have to stop anything. Don’t you remember? I didn’t try to run. I offered.”

His hands were shaking, eyes cast downward at where your hands clasped his. You felt alarmed and confused; you’d never seen your Captain so shaken. Even his jaw trembled as he started to speak.

“Why didn’t you run?” he asked, voice pitched low, almost a whisper. “Why couldn’t you have tried to get away? How could you let me… I never wanted it, not like this, not when you couldn’t… and I couldn’t… why couldn’t you have run?” He looked up at you then, a single tear shaken loose by the action, slipping from a too-blue eye and sliding down a cheek gone rosy with the emotion of the moment.

You shook your head, regarding him with confusion. “And let you, what, die? I’d never.”

“Maybe it’d been better,” Steve countered, pulling his hands from yours and scrubbing away at the stray tear. He flattened his palms against his knees, glaring down at his hands as though he were accusing them of the crime he imagined he had committed. “I should have fought harder to keep control. I tried so damn hard, but you… god, if you had run, maybe I could have beat it, if you had been afraid, but you were so calm and you… maybe I could have fought it if I hadn’t already wanted you so damn bad.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, loves. I wrote and rewrote this last chapter a half dozen times, couldn't seem to get it right.

It felt as though all of the air had been drawn out of the room, or at least out of your lungs. Time stood still, and your heart refused to beat in your chest. 

There were times that you had considered it, telling Steve about your feelings, over the course of the years you had known each other, but you’d always chosen to err on the side of caution. You can from a military background, an honorable discharge from the army and straight into SHIELD training, and Steve outranked you. In the life you had left behind, that would be considered grossly inappropriate. Even though your logical mind knew that you weren’t a mere army specialist anymore and that your former rank meant nothing in the work you were doing, it still made you prickle, the thought of crossing that line. 

You let out a long breath, one that you hadn’t even realized you had been holding, and dropped your head to your hands, the afghan falling off your shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” Steve mumbled. “I didn’t… you were never supposed to know.”

You glanced up sharply, tears filling your eyes, much as you tried to will them away. You must have looked awful, you realized: your hair still damp from your shower so many hours before, hanging half in your face, eyes still red from your earlier bouts of of shame and confusion. Part of you wanted to turn tail and run, but you had to see this through.

“Why?” you asked, voice shaky. “Don’t you get it, Steve? What I’ve been trying to tell you? I made my choice today because there was no choice to make. It wasn’t about a teammate and it wasn’t about saving a life, Steve, it was about you, about giving you what you needed. Anyone else in that room and I might have hesitated, but not you. Never you.”

You reached out and put your hands over his, marveling at how small your hands seemed over his and how warm his skin was beneath your palms. Constellations of tiny scars crisscrossed over his knuckles, remnants of every fight and every battle he’d ever been in. The serum may have made him heal faster, but the cuts and bruises on his hands were such a constant that they still left a mark. Some things just couldn’t be erased.

“We could forget this ever happened,” you said quietly. “No one else knows, just you and me and Nat. She won’t tell a soul. We can forget it and go back to the way things were.”

Steve swallowed hard, eyes still on where your hands rest against his. He moved his own, gently twining your fingers together. He let out a shaky breath and looked up, brilliant blue eyes meeting yours, still dimmed with worry and confusion.

“Is that what you want?” he asked.

“I just want us to be okay,” you replied, the words tasting sour in your mouth as you knew full well that you were lying. You didn’t want to be just okay. You couldn’t. You couldn’t pretend anymore, now that you knew that he wanted you.

“I just want you,” Steve told you simply, eyes going wide with surprise at his own words, as he hadn’t meant to say them at all. 

 

You felt a sudden rush of the same confidence you had felt in that dusty server room hours before, even as it seemed eons ago. You stood slowly, letting the blanket fall from your shoulders and onto your abandoned seat on the couch, closing the short distance between you and Steve with only a step or two. 

Steve said your name softly, almost reverently. Without your hands gripping at the ties, your robe fell open and his eyes drifted, falling from your face to your breasts, down to your abdomen and beyond, but his hands remained steadfastly flat against his knees. Just like before, he wouldn’t reach for you, he wouldn’t let himself make that first move, so you made it for him. You took one of his hands in your own, placing it against your bare thigh and sliding it up to rest against the softness of your belly.

“Just you and me, Steve,” you said quietly. “No mission, no ranks… nothing forcing us to act. Just you, and me, and whatever we want to do together. Okay?” You bit your lip, waiting for his response, unsure if you had been reading him wrong or if you had been too bold.

He let out a sigh strong enough to shudder his shoulders and closed his eyes, leaning forward to press his face against the soft skin of your abdomen, and you had your answer. You felt the warm damp exhale of his breath against your skin once, then twice, before you felt the warm press of his lips and you closed your eyes, letting your arms fall around his shoulders with a whisper of his name.

Steve wrapped his arms around you beneath your robe as he continued his ministrations against your stomach; your head fell back, eyes closed and lips parted on a sigh when his mouth opened against your skin, teeth scraping just gentle enough to feel but not enough to leave a mark. Your robe slipped from your shoulders, catching at the crook of your elbows and hanging low enough to brush the floor. You reached to run your fingers through his hair, nails gently scratching at the short hairs at the back of his neck, drawing out a low muffled groan from his lips.

Without warning, you felt yourself lifted off the ground. Steve stood effortlessly, as though you weighed nothing at all in his arms, and even as you gasped at the sudden motion, you instinctively wrapped your legs around his waist. Standing there in the stillness of his quarters, you shared your first real kiss, slow and hesitant quickly giving way to needy and fevered. It was everything you had imagined: his lips so soft and tentative, eyes still the slightest bit unsure before fluttering shut beneath his thick lashes. Spurred on by the whimpers he drew from you with his kiss, Steve grew bolder and kissed you deeply, as though he were a man starved for affection, pulling at the sleeves of your robe to let it fall to the floor, leaving you bare and perfectly enveloped in his arms.

He carried you to his bedroom, dark and blessedly cool. All pretense had drifted away and he talked to you, whispering and mumbling as he kissed you. Telling you how badly he had wanted you, all along. How he’d started falling for you from the moment he laid eyes on you. It nearly brought tears to your eyes, everything you had wanted to hear him say, everything you’d imagined being whispered in your ear, all of those wonderful sweet words drifting so effortlessly from Steve’s lips as he laid you down in his bed and let his eyes drink you in once again.

You drew in a sharp breath, watching as Steve pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it away, looming over you before drawing close to you again. The heated skin of his chest against yours felt like a revelation; you had longed for it in the server room, the intimacy of it, the knowledge that he really wanted you, as badly as you had wanted him. For the longest time he just kissed you, letting his hands roam and get to know your body, skating across your skin as he mapped out your form with his fingertips. You didn’t want to rush him but it wasn’t enough, not after you had waited so long to have him like this, not after you had been given a taste of it already.

“Steve,” you gasped out, his lips drawing hard against your nipple while his hand slid to the cleft between your thighs. “Steve, please. Need you.”

Steve let out a moan at your words, the sound damn near pornographic to your ears, and you reached to push at the band of his sweatpants, sliding them down his waist until your hands were grasping at the firm globes of his ass. You dug your nails just gently into his skin and he growled, kicking his pants the rest of the way down to lay abandoned at the foot of the bed.

He pressed inside you slowly, giving your body time to adjust to the intrusion. Steve’s shoulders shuddered, his eyes squeezed shut as he loomed over you; that sight alone would have been enough to spark a fever in your blood. 

“So good,” Steve whispered. “God, you feel so good.” It gave you a secret thrill, his words echoing what he had uttered in the server room and letting you know that even with the chemical, he had been there with you, somewhat present in his own mind and body as he took you, hard and rough, on the floor.

It was perfect. Steve kissed you as he rolled his hips, pressed his forehead to yours and whispered how good you felt, how badly he had wanted this. 

“Steve, please,” you moaned. “I’m so… I’m…”

“Yeah?” he asked in return, knowing what you were trying to say. He started moving faster, pulling impossible close against him, knees crooked at his hips. Every thrust ended in a short, dirty grind inside of you and you were seeing stars even before you reached that precipice, breaths coming short and fast.

You came with his name on your lips, your own echoed back to you second later in a low groan, Steve’s shoulders shaking as he buried his face in the crook of your shoulder. You closed your eyes, running your fingers through his sweat-damp hair while he came down from your shared high.

 

Steve never stopped touching you, even as you both became drowsy and you spooned back against his chest. He seemed to marvel in it, the touch of your skin and the weight of your body against his. You couldn’t help but smile sleepily as he started brushing his lips across your shoulder.

“You’re beautiful,” Steve told you softly.

You gave a small laugh in return. “Oh I bet you say that to all the girls you take home,” you teased.

Steve snorted. “You live a couple floors away from me, doll,” he reminded. “You’d have noticed if I was bringin’ anyone home.” 

You tried not to feel a little smug about that.

You heard a sharp intake of breath when Steve discovered the red and bruising bite mark he had left on your shoulder earlier that day. He sighed and ghosted his lips across the mark.

“Never again,” he told you. “I’ll never hurt you like this, ever.” 

You gave a pleased sigh in return, moving your hand to cover his where it rest just below your breasts, and gave it a gentle squeeze. Steve kissed your shoulder again and you felt him smile against your skin.

“Unless you want me to,” he added, and you couldn’t help but laugh.


End file.
